• 

Prices rise as exporters seek supply

Paddy prices in Vietnam jumped about 10 percent in the past week as exporters scrambled to find supplies for loading at the main Saigon Port, traders said on Wednesday. "Any new grain from the summer-autumn crop harvest is immediately snapped up by exporters who were desperate to get enough rice to load the ships which have already arrived," a trader in key rice-trading hub Ho Chi Minh City said.* This week, traders said a kg of unhusked rice in the rice-basket Mekong Delta rose to 3,000 dong (19 U.S. cent), up about 10 percent on last week's prices. Indicative export prices for 5 percent broken rice also firmed this week to around $310 a tonne, versus $305-$307 last week. "Exporters simply cannot afford to pay for feeds and penalties for the delayed loading at the Saigon Port so they are really rushing to get anything they can get," the trader added. This week, 12 vessels were waiting to load 193,150 tonnes of mainly 25 percent broken rice grade for the Philippines, Indonesia, Cuba and Africa while only seven others have completed loading 71,600 tonnes for Africa and the Philippines. While the summer-autumn crop harvest has been going well, the harvesting activity has caused brown grasshoppers to jump to nearby fields, spreading the damaged area, traders said. "Brown grasshoppers and other pests could reduce the average output of the summer-autumn crop to under 5 tonnes per hectare," a trader said. On Wednesday, state media quoted the Agriculture Ministry as saying that about 150,000 hectares of paddy in the Mekong Delta have been severly damaged by brown grasshoppers.   (Source: VNA)

 

< Prev		Next >